Our Finest Hour

My truck broke down. Twice. Twice mind you. In one day. The first time I was on my way to work, and getting later every minute, with 18 hungry horses waiting to be fed. The second time we thought it was fixed, with my family on their way home and me on my way back to work, when it was dead dead dead. Again. So I walked those three miles back to work. On that very hot (ninety degree) day.

My family had their own trials. Husband hates, and I do mean hates, mechanical work of that sort. He cusses the entire time. My kids were all still asleep when the call came to get up, do chores, eat, get dressed, and not know what the day would hold from one minute to the next. And new starters don’t come free.

But here is what happened. No one panicked and no one whined. Everyone met the challenge. Even the youngest sucked it up and went with the it. When it was over, he told us how much he hadn’t wanted to do it, but he had done it anyway. While the kids were at the barn with me, they helped work. A lot. Later when they were at home, when husband had to come back to fix the truck the second time, they looked around and they did not just do whatever. They knew how much stress we were under and they not only did their chores but asked themselves what else needed to be done and did it. In fact, they undertook a major project that had been waiting in the wings and they finished it. Themselves.

In the movie Apollo 13, Ed Harris who is playing Gene Kranz confronts the potential scale of that disaster and says: "With all due respect, sir, I believe this will be our finest hour.” That day was definitely one of our finest hours, an hour that showed the absolutely magnificently right stuff our family is made of. I am awed by every one of them. And all of us together, well!

And not only my family. A friend came and got me to work the first time, and my boss was totally great about all the irregularities of the day, and I had help that day which I usually don’t or I never would have finished up. A stranger with nothing to gain tried to help me the first time I was broken down. Kindness after kindness was shown to me.

Of course at the end of it, husband looked at me and said, “Who is going to stop and get the beer, me or you?”

Me.